I was wondering if anyone had a, or could make a buyers guide for purchasing new parts...Like one which tailors for all price ranges..

Budget > Mid-Range > Beast Machines.

Partly as im looking to upgrade and looking o buy buy some new parts with a absolulty maximum price of £400 I suppose...

Any help from people...Tbh im looking for a PCI-E Motherboard...Processor...Graphics Card...maybe a HDD (depends on the price)...

Cheers in advance.

Colin.
Wins Life

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The Road!

My PC cost £400 when I first bought it......although its worth more as I upgraded.

Get a decent motherboard, going to cost you around £100
CPU....I got a AMD 3800+ recently for £89

HD: depends, 80GB is good enough for me and was quite cheap. Their around £30

For ram, you can pick up 512mb sticks for £15, they're just crap for overclocking, but work fine otherwise

GFX card: I've got a 6600 GT, and that plays most gaes on reasonably medium-high settings. But try and get the best gfx card you can, as they'll soon go out of date (ie geforece 7)

For an optical drive, really matter of choice. More features = more money, but I'm sure a basic DVD drice would be about £20.

You can probably pick up a cheap case for £20-30 with PSU included.

I'll scout around for some links in a minute

Yeah, I just noticed a Athlon64 3800+ for £95, and it looks niiice....

At the moment, Ive got two 80GB HDDs...And its not enough... RAM is good, ive got 1GB atm...might buy another stick...

Optical Drive is fine aswell, I picked up a rather good DVD-Writer for £20 Cheapest in britain... Ive got links for anyone who wants a look....

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The Road!

I know little or nothing about ATI/intel computers, so all the links are going to be for AMD/nVidia.

Mobo with intergrated sound and LAN *AM2 Socket#* (non SLi though):click

GFX card: 7600GT
Not actually made by novatech, but its just luck as to what brand you get. I got a chaintech when I ordered my 6600gt from novatech.

CPU: quite cheap, scroll down to the 3800 *AM2* CPU

For the above, I make it about £250, excluding delivery. So theres plenty of room to get better stuff

Double check if your RAM will be compatible with the motherboard before you buy it btw, I didn't and tried fitting some really old ram into the 184-pin on the new motherboard. :s

Hmm some very nice ideas...

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The Road!

I would suggest , if you could go without sm3, to get an x800GTo2 but you better make sure its the red board, dual dvi that has the 480chip. -I had to sent two back but the one i got now Oc'd from 400 to 540mhz np (about another 100mhz on memory too)..it requires a flash being performed but if you got it, i could give you instructions on how to unlock the pipes from 12 to 16.

Just had a look for it, place i got the right version from doesnt sell it now. 7600 might be best bet as its more future proof despite not being as potentially nifty.

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Financial Adviser of STFU...and ENRON

cpu wise, if you are looking for and upgrade, wait for a month or two till conroe comes out.

the new intel line of desktop processors (all dual core) are destroying all from the pre-release benchmarks ive seen.

and they seem to capable of a 30-50% overclock with no effort at all.

they start around £130 and go up to £1000 so they will include everything except the real budget machine.

as for graphics.... im not sure at the mo, DX10 is coming soon. so now maybe a bad time to buy.

waiting for the DX10 cards will mean cheaper DX9 cards or should you want/afford the next level of shinney then you have the option.

personally my next machine will be DX10 and conroe or kentsfield (the 4 core eversion of conroe).

just my two pence.
shrek

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Designer of the hardware used in BF:2020

^^Learning CS2, dont laugh^^